Courtney Spence on How Support Networks Help Women Professionals

In Chapter 15 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Courtney Spence answers "What Makes a Women's Professional Network Valuable?"  Spence notes the majority of her organization is female.  She notes the career and parenting balancing challenges being a woman presents and the importance of both giving support to and receiving support from other women while finding that balance over time.   Courtney Spence returns to Capture Your Flag for her Year 3 interview.  As Founder and Executive Director, Spence leads non-profit Students of the World to empower college students to use film, photography, and journalism to tell stories of global issues and the organizations working to address them.  Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What makes a women’s professional network valuable?

Courtney Spence: Interestingly enough, our staff is 98% female. We work – it’s all women and it’s not purposeful it’s just how its happened. It’s been wonderful and I think what I’ve realized is I think women – everybody has their challenges and this is not a woe is us, but women do have a lot more to balance, in a sense of, you know, this – the urge and desires to have a family and the urge and desires to have a career, and just by default that women have to carry the babies for 9 months and deal with that repercussion, there’s a lot more to I think that struggle of I want – if I wanna be a mother, I wanna be a great mother. If I’m wanna be a professional, I’ll be a great professional, and I wanna do both. How in the hell am I gonna do both?

I think that, you know, I look at my mother and she was – she’s, I’m convinced, the best mother in the world. And I wanna be just like her if I choose that path to have children but how am I gonna do that and do Students of the World which is a child, and it’s my child that I have had for 12 years. So how do I do that? How do I struggle with the emotions that come with that? I think there’s, again, as you get into your 30’s, you start to really – you have to start making decisions that will affect the rest of your life. You have to start living more consciously than you did in your 20’s, or at least I have, because you do recognize that, you know, life doesn’t go on forever and that there are certain phases to life and you have to prepare yourself for those because you don’t wanna wake up one day and be like, how did I – I never made a choice, and this is where I am. I wanna be a lot more an active participant in my life personally.

And so as I’m struggling through what does that mean and what does that look like, finding other women to be supportive and give advice and go through those trenches with me and me to do that with others is really important because I think there’s not just the need to be mentored and supported but as women, we feel the need to support and mentor others in general, and there is great satisfaction that comes from that.

And I think that for me, the women – the women’s movement – and, you know, this started, you know, when I wrote a, you know, high school paper on the importance of first ladies, and I remember I sent a copy to then first lady Hillary Clinton. And I realized that Hillary has been such a really, really incredible role model for me, you know, that I, you know particularly since 2008, have recognized the need to really bring women together and that the importance of a woman’s network and how difficult that is because, you know, unlike other groups or cohorts, women are so diverse, you know, in physical locations, in socio-economic situations, but we all have the commonality of being female, of being a woman, and how do we bring that group together more effectively is a great challenge of our time I think.

Courtney Spence on Learning to See Networking as a Positive Pursuit

In Chapter 16 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Courtney Spence answers "How Are You Learning to Make Your Professional Network More Useful?"  Spence shares her personal and professional transition from being internal focused to being more receptive of external pursuits, in particular networking.  Over time she starts to push away from seeing networking in a negative connotation toward something positive.  Courtney Spence returns to CYF for her Year 3 interview.  As Founder and Executive Director, Spence leads non-profit Students of the World to empower college students to use film, photography, and journalism to tell stories of global issues and the organizations working to address them.  Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How are you learning to make your professional network more useful?

Courtney Spence: The last 2 months have been very external for me. So we were internal, figuring out our vision, what we’re gonna go do? How are we gonna go do it? Who’s gonna do it with us? And really, you know, the end of 2011 was very internally focused. I didn’t travel as much. I didn’t take meetings. We did retreats and we, you know, we just built our team. And the whole concept was we would build our team so that come January 1, 2012, Spence would get out on the road and start to – not just raise money, but raise partnerships, like as we scale and grow, we want to do it with others. I mean there is such power in collaboration – what we do by nature is collaborative and we’re not gonna go do the big things without really great partners and purpose. So I’m not just out trying to raise donor dollars, I’m really trying to raise partners and bring more people onto our side and our team, and what’s been really exciting about being in that very external phase is that I have started to really expand our network and also started to see ways in which people connect.

I think one of the things I would love to do in the next couple of months is actually visually represent who is the Students of the World community and network, because dots are starting to connect in places I never would have dreamed. And I think there’s something about that kind of synchronicity that’s very encouraging and exciting, but you have to be in the right place and with the right frame of mind to see those connections and appreciate them. I think network prior to this phase that I’m in, network and networking had a very negative connotation for me. I think I really thought of it as a wheeling and dealing and – for some reason, it just didn’t – it didn’t sit right with me.

But I’ve realized it’s about we have something that we think is really important and we wanna go do. And we have to do it with other people, you don’t achieve success alone. And the only way we’re gonna bring the right people on is by being out there and being -- and networking, and by really figuring out who are the people that believe in this and want to be part of it. It’s a very positive thing, it’s not a negative thing, it’s very positive. So that’s been a pretty big transformation for me.

Courtney Spence on How to Define Social Entrepreneurship

In Chapter 17 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Courtney Spence answers "How Do You Define Social Entrepreneurship?"  Spence learns from her father, who learned from his mother, it is about leaving the world a better place than he or she found it.  She believes it has little to do with legal structure - for-profit or not-for-profit - and more to do with cause, intention, and purpose to affect change.  Courtney Spence returns to CYF for her Year 3 interview.  As Founder and Executive Director, Spence leads non-profit Students of the World to empower college students to use film, photography, and journalism to tell stories of global issues and the organizations working to address them.  Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How do you define social entrepreneurship?

Courtney Spence: So a social entrepreneur wants to leave a place better than he or she found it. That is a lesson that my father taught me, that was taught to him by his mother. But if I think if you distill it down, what is a social entrepreneur, it is someone that cares about the world or their community or their family or an individual and wants to help make that situation better through his or her actions and leadership and idea. And, you know, that can be for profit, it can be non-profit, I quite frankly wish that we could stop using those words to describe what it is that we do, because quite frankly they’re legal structures, you can have non-profits that are terrible and that hurt the world and you can have for profits that are great and help the world. But what, you know, the best are the ones that do well and do good, and that are social enterprises and that are cause driven, that are socially driven and I think the world could use more of them.

Courtney Spence on Why to Teach Entrepreneurial Spirit in Schools

In Chapter 18 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Courtney Spence answers "How Can the Education System Better Prepare Social Entrepreneurs?"  Spence differentiates between entrepreneurs who have started organizations from those with entrepreneurial spirit who want to create something new.  She shares how the education system - middle school, high school, and college included - should turn focus to teaching the entrepreneurial spirit and how to help students thrive in uncertain times.  Courtney Spence returns to CYF for her Year 3 interview.  As Founder and Executive Director, Spence leads non-profit Students of the World to empower college students to use film, photography, and journalism to tell stories of global issues and the organizations working to address them.  Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How can the education system better prepare social entrepreneurs?

Courtney Spence: Well, first of all, I think it’s really important to recognize the difference between someone who is an entrepreneur and someone who has the entrepreneurial spirit. So what I’m noticing with the team that we’re putting together with Students of the World, everybody is motivated by an entrepreneurial spirit. Everybody is excited by the big challenge and even the uncertainty and really is finding, you know, excitement and drive and motivation, not through what are they getting paid or where is their name gonna go on the collateral or on the website, it’s really through this idea of we’re creating something that wasn’t there before. Does that mean that everybody that’s a part of our organization is an entrepreneur? Not necessarily.

I think that an entrepreneur is someone that in that capacity can help set leadership and vision but the – everybody on our team has the entrepreneurial spirit. So I think there is an importance that is lacking in educational system, and this is middle school, high school, and college quite frankly, that helps to encourage that entrepreneurial spirit and that idea of thriving in uncertain times, I mean that’s I think the world is trended that way and I think we all recognize over the course of the last decade that uncertainty is the only certain thing we have, and the really successful individuals and organizations are gonna be ones that can thrive through in uncertainty and uncertain times, externally and internally.

And I think that our education system could do more to support whether it’s teenagers going through those uncertain years or whether it’s college students preparing them for when they leave college, those – there are some massive uncertain years that happen right after college and most people that I talk to say, “Well, no one told me that this was gonna happen.” So I think that really preparing individuals to find internally the strength and the courage to get him or her through those tough times, those uncertain times, will help to foster entrepreneurship in general.

Advice from Courtney Spence on Starting Career in Social Entrepreneurship

In Chapter 19 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Courtney Spence answers "What is Your Advice to Aspiring Social Entrepreneurs on How to Start a Career?"  Spence details the importance of curiosity and cultivating it through research and conversations.  After gaining enough inputs Spence notes how aspiring social entrepreneurs will be better prepared to take action on the knowledge gained.  Courtney Spence returns to CYF for her Year 3 interview.  As Founder and Executive Director, Spence leads non-profit Students of the World to empower college students to use film, photography, and journalism to tell stories of global issues and the organizations working to address them.  Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What is your advice to aspiring social entrepreneurs and how to start a career?

Courtney Spence: One of the essential qualities of really great entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs – the essential characteristic is that of curiosity. I think that we are all curious human beings but I think entrepreneurs, in general, are -- tend to be more curious than others, and so really understanding how to cultivate that curiosity and how to encourage that curiosity, and I think the ways to do that are by reading, and by meeting with new people, and going to new places, and really – as you’re trying to incubate your idea, really seeking out advice from as many people as you can, from as many diverse fields as you can.

I mean if you’re gonna go create a non-profit, don’t just go talk to people that run non-profits, you know? That’s why I think, you know, South by Southwest is such a great conference and a time to be in Austin irregardless of whether or not you’re in tech or communications or music or film, I think that you come here and you’re emotionally and intellectually stimulated in so many different ways and if you are an entrepreneur, and you’re coming up with an idea or a plan to change the world, you need to be stimulated in a lot of different ways, and in ways that you’re not anticipating right now. Because if you only cultivate that one aspect of what you’re trying to do, you put blinders on and you limit not only what you could really go out and do but how effective you can be in your mission and what you’re trying to achieve.

So really cultivating that curiosity and really soaking up as much information and knowledge and reading and conversations, and then knowing when to stop. Because at some point you will find that everybody has an opinion and everybody is giving you advice and some people say go right and some people say go left, and some will say go up, and then others will say go down. You will always get conflicting advice, and at some point you have to know, okay, I’ve taken in a lot, I need to retreat and really reflect on the advice I’ve been given, on the articles that I’ve read, on the books I’ve been reading, and figure out where is the right direction for me to go with this idea, this organization or for myself.

Courtney Spence on How Being True to Oneself Brings Out Personal Best

In Chapter 1 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "When Are You at Your Best?" She notes how she performs best around those she loves and those who she can be herself around. This results in more open and trusted settings that allow Spence to thrive. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  When are you at your best?

Courtney Spence: Probably at my best when I am working with people I really love, that I can be really honest with.  I’m a pretty emotional person and I take everything personally which is both good and both bad, but that means that particularly in a work environment if I am not – I don’t feel like I’m with people that I can be honest with, and when I’m upset, be upset with, or be -- I’m angry or when I’m happy, I feel comfortable, I trust them enough to be who I am.  When I’ve been in environments where I did not have that, it was very hard for me to even be a shade of my best.  But I would say, you know, for me, personally, in the last, you know, year and a half, really, I have assembled a really great team of people that I’m working with and it’s just so liberating to be able to really be true to who you are both at home and in your workplace.

Courtney Spence on What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder

In Chapter 2 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?" She finds it harder to find and manage time, as increasing responsibilities and interests are pressuring her to better prioritize and schedule. Spence is finding relationships easier to navigate and manage as she comes to accept as you get older and have less time, you realize everyone else is in same boat. As a result, she finds keeping up with her college friends more manageable than previously thought. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World - http://studentsoftheworld.org - a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What is getting easier and what is getting harder in your life?

Courtney Spence:  Wow.  Well, it is getting harder to find time, I think.  That’s something – I think back to even just my college years and all of the things I was able to do, and volunteer, and go to church, and still have time to work out every day, and hang out with friends, and bake cookies for people.  And do, I mean it was – I had, you know – I had all this time, and then you know, you make the transition into the workforce and the workplace, and you realize, okay, my time is a bit more limited.  But particularly, for me in the past year, I just – I can’t seem to find the time. I have found more and more things that I’m interested in doing and learning about and knowing about, so there’s – it’s almost like my horizons keep getting wider, but my time somehow seems to be a little bit less.  So that’s hard. 

I think it’s – at the same time, I guess I would say what’s getting easier is this concept of relationships in a sense that, you know, most recently this year, I was able to reconnect with some friends from college that I hadn’t seen since we graduated, so its been over ten years, and we picked up like it had been yesterday that we are at Duke, and there was just this sense of awe that I had that, you know, I was sort of worried about some of these friendships and these relationships, and what would it be like, I haven’t seen them in so long, and it was – it was incredible, and I think there is something I have understood as you get older and you don’t find that you have the time that you want to put into relationships.  You realize that everybody else is in that same boat and that more often than not, if you have had a period in your life where you’ve been close to people, you will always be able to go back to that foundation.  So it’s not to say that you don’t have to work at relationships and friendships because you do, but I think there is this sense that, you know, everybody is going through their own battles, everybody is going through their own struggles, and you know, if you ever had a connection, you can still find that connection again.

Courtney Spence on How Non-Profit Shifts From Survival to Growth Mode

In Chapter 3 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "What is Enabling Your Ambition to Shift Away from How to Survive to How to Thrive?" After seven years in operation, Spence finds her organization hitting an inflection point from a small budget and staffed organization operating in a recession to a future-focused organization ready to scale. She finds conversations shift from verbal support to actionable requests to help. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What is enabling your ambition to shift away from ‘how to survive’ to ‘how to thrive’?

Courtney Spence:  It’s interesting.  So we’ve been doing this for 11 years.  This is our eleventh year.  That’s—now we’ve been doing it as a national 501c3 nonprofit for seven, almost eight now.  I’ll start at, you know, at that eight year mark because that’s really when I was envisioning, you know, a national organization, a national nonprofit, you know, especially being as young as I was, you know, you set these insane benchmarks and so this concept of where would we be in 2011.  In my mind, when I was 23, looked very different than where we are now, but what has happened and what’s something I’m really appreciative of is that we’ve really done the hard work, and we’ve really, you know, what we’ve done with such a limited budget, with such a limited number of staff, through one of the most difficult financial, you know, crisis and times in our life, and, you know, in the history of this country, like I have to say I’m really proud of our team and of our students and of our organization for having been able to last through that, and its really been in the last six months that – what happened was I know there had to have been a change internally where all of a sudden I had more confidence, and I think coming off of this summer that was so incredible, coming off, you know, being able to be in New Orleans for the fifth anniversary of Katrina and seeing our partners there, you know, the inspiration that I took from the summer, I think probably changed something internally. 

Externally, what I noticed is conversations went from ‘oh you’re fighting a good fight, keep up the good work’, “aren’t you doing so great’ to ‘I wanna help, I’m taking out my Blackberry, I wanna connect with this person, and this person, and then let’s meet in two weeks and see where you are.’  So there was just this shift and that shift has happened in so many various relationships that we have at Students of the World that you just feel this momentum and this movement that’s happening.  And, you know, as the space that we live in, which is, you know, empowering young people to tell stories of progress through cause-related media, you know, young people have been interested in traveling the world and have increasingly had the capacity, and the skills, and the knowledge, and the equipment to do this work.  And finally, I think this -- the concept of nonprofit storytelling really is coming into its own.  You know, so all of these things kind of, you know, come together, and what you realize is that, you know, you actually have an ability to see not just where are we in three months, but where do we wanna be in three years, where do we wanna be in ten years, what is the real big difference we’re here to make, what’s our BHAG, what’s our big hairy audacious goal, what is our purpose. 

When you’re just trying to survive and you’re just trying to pay the rent, and pay your employees, and get the work done, and you’re focused like this, you’re not able to think and not able to see long term, and you have – there are moments where you have to be like that, but its been very exciting to watch sort of our horizons go from here to sort of like this, and like I’m able to now see possibilities where before it was – they weren’t necessarily there or I wasn’t seeing them.  So it’s a combination of a lot of things but this point where you’re, you know, between surviving and thriving, it’s a very exciting but it’s also a very scary place to be.

Courtney Spence on Making Your Work More Meaningful

In Chapter 4 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "How are You Learning to Make Your Work More Meaningful and Lasting?" She makes it a priority to enjoy the process and the journey of her organization's impact and story. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen :  How are you learning to make your work more meaningful and lasting?

Courtney Spence:  I think it’s really important to enjoy the process.  I think, for a while, there it was so much about we haven’t met these goals.  Where are we?  I was so disappointed in not being where I wanted to be.  And when you sort of – I had to let that go this last year because we were giving it one last shot, and it was, you know, making some crazy decisions, and, you know, making some risky decisions, and it started slowly, it’s starting to pay off, but what I realized is I had a great team.  I mean the women that I work with, I love, and we laughed more, and we have more fun than I’ve had in the long time, so I have really, really enjoyed the process because that’s all we have.  We have the journey, the destination is not guaranteed, and when you get there, it doesn’t look like you thought it would look, and then there’s another place you gotta go.  So if you don’t enjoy the journey, you’re not gonna enjoy your life, and the work that you do won’t be as impactful as it could be.

Courtney Spence on Why Momentum is Fundamental to Understanding Success

In Chapter 5 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "Why is Momentum Fundamental to Understanding and Measuring Success?" She notes how her non-profit, Students of the World, is learning to better understand past performance and translate it into milestones framing future strategy. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  Why is momentum fundamental to understanding and measuring success?

Courtney Spence:  You know, when you talk about success, you talk about, you know, where you were before and where you are now, and it’s sort of a measurement over a period of time.  For us, we’ve had a lot of momentum in this last year, and so I can look back to where I was, and I’m constantly doing this every, you know, month of the year, sort of a benchmark, at like something that I look back to whether it’s, you know, the conversation we had a year ago, whether it’s Christmas, whether it’s the Clinton Global Initiative.  You have this sort of annual benchmarks that I’m, you know, consistently hitting. 

And something that I have been able to appreciate is where – over the course of the last year, you know, where we were and where we are now, and our, you know, confidence in what we’re doing.  And I say ‘our’, because I think it’s the whole team, but really, you know, for myself, the confidence in what we’re doing, the belief that we really are going somewhere pretty great is not where I was even a year ago.  So, I’ve felt like I’ve just been sort of pushed along a little bit which has been great.  It has really helped to – helped me to appreciate how far we’ve come and the successes that we’ve had to date.

Courtney Spence on What It Means to Be a Leader in Non-Profit Executive Job

In Chapter 6 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "What Does it Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?" She defines being a leader as helping others find the best in themselves and using this to make the greatest contribution to the team and organization. By giving students responsibility and ownership in the organization, Spence finds she is creating a lasting support network that progressively helping make the organization and its people more effective. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What does it mean to be a leader in what you do?

Courtney Spence:  For me I think being a leader means helping other people find the best in themselves and helping other people feel that not only are they contributing to society in a great way but they’re contributing to the team, contributing to the vision, and really being able to see people grow in that role, and whether it’s our staff, whether it’s our students, whether it’s our interns, our board of directors, you know, the people that have really, you know, become part of the Students of the World family, I think there is certainly a feeling of responsibility to them to really tell them how integral they are to the organization but not through by just telling but by showing them, enabling them to really have ownership in where we are now and where we’re going.  You know, as we’re going through this process, it’s really – it’s going back to our alumni that participated eleven years ago, it’s going to our alumni that participated last year going to, you know, parents of students that participated.  

It’s really bringing in all of these different communities that this organization has touched and really trying to figure out how to bring them back into the fold and make them realize that they are a part of this greater network that is Students of the World.  So, you know, I’m very conscious of my role and all of that, and I think that, you know, it’s very easy sometimes to get caught up in your personal, ‘oh my gosh, I don’t have time, oh my gosh, I’m very stressed, oh my gosh, I have all of this to do’, but if you stop focusing on yourself and start focusing on others, I find that for me, I think I’ve become more effective as a leader, and I think that, all in all, the organization and the individuals that make it up are happier and more efficient, and it works.

Courtney Spence on How Haiti Relief Trip Teaches Commitment to a Cause

In Chapter 7 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "What Did Traveling to Port Au Prince, Haiti One Year After the Earthquake Teach You About Commitment to a Cause?" Traveling to Haiti for five days during the one-year anniversary of the earthquake educates Spence on why and how relief efforts must be long-term focused. During her trip she meets local students, artisans and young professionals. Drawing on experiences from Uganda and New Orleans, Spence prioritizes spotlighting recovery and reconstruction after the tragedy. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What did traveling to Haiti one year after the earthquake teach you about commitment to a cause?

Courtney Spence:  Traveling to Haiti and being there the anniversary of the earthquake, January 12th, I think it was 4:57 p.m., I don’t know the exact time in the afternoon it was.  It was very – it’s very hard to describe.  I was only there for five days, but those five days have certainly changed the course of my life, and I know that Haiti will always be a part of my personal life and most likely now my professional life as well, but the things that I saw and the people that I met, it was both a feeling of ‘oh my gosh, that has happened a year ago and there is still so much, you know, rubble, collapsed buildings, people living in tents.  Port-au-Prince is just – I mean the traffic and the population density that all of these people that, you know, 80% of them don’t have jobs, and you see this, it’s very, very visual, and I don’t have something to reference it from a year ago.

I have been told by people that have been there for a while that it actually looks, you know, much better than it did before, but I don’t think I appreciated the true massive event that it was because when I went I’ve never seen anything like that ever in all of my travels, and so there was a part of me that, particularly on the day, that was the anniversary, how do we understand that in, you know, forty seconds of time, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and millions of people were displaced and are now, you know, without homes?  That – it’s overwhelming, and at the same time, you know, you – I had a really incredible opportunity to meet with individuals that are pushing along, pushing forward, that’s what you do, life is hard, and there’s this understanding that I really felt from every Haitian that I met that this is just how life is.  We got dealt this, you know, this hand of cards, and we’re just gonna do something with it.  

So it’s, you know, meeting young people that are going into IT world and helping bring wireless access to rural parts of Haiti.  It’s people that, you know, artists that have now been able through great NGOs and organizations have made a deal with Macy’s and anthropology to get their -- their vases, and, you know, their paper-mâché, beautiful, beautiful artwork sold in the U.S., and are making a living as an artist in Haiti.  It’s meeting these people, these individuals that are so positive about where they’re headed and so encouraged by what they can do and what the Haitian people can do.  It’s also staggering to see that.  Having those two overwhelming senses when I was there that happened to be on the one-year anniversary of the earthquake, and although I think it did get some news coverage, I felt that it was overshadowed by other news of the day, and it was all in all very disappointing to me in some regards because I’ve seen this in New Orleans with Katrina, I’ve seen it in northern Uganda where, you know, the LRA has left, and so we have now forgotten these people that still have to rebuild their lives and that are at their most critical moment of rebuilding their lives.  

That’s when we need to be there.  That’s when the media needs to be shining a light on the progress that’s made but the progress that still yet to be made because, you know, we have so many things that pull us in so many different directions, and we seem to really gravitate towards the massive tragedies and not really think about what is the long, hard, marathon, running work of rebuilding and reconstructing and building back better, and that’s the place that I wanna be in, not just the immediate ‘oh my gosh, can you believe how horrible this is?’  It’s ‘oh my gosh, it’s a year later, and where are they, and what can we be doing, and why don’t we feel the sense of urgency now that we felt then because they still need help and we have abilities to that?’  So it was a – yeah, it was a – it was an incredible, incredible trip.

Courtney Spence on How to Use Art Education to Create Social Change

In Chapter 8 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "What Do You Enjoy Most About Working at the Intersection of Social Change, Art and Education?" Spence finds the continuing change present at this intersection provides a powerful storytelling platform for individuals looking to do good in the world. She finds telling stories of progress through the lens of the good happening in the world, it is more actionable. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What do you enjoy most about working at the intersection of social change, art, and education?

Courtney Spence:  What I enjoy most about working in that intersection of art, education, and social change is the fact that it is constantly changing and it’s full of individuals that really have a burning desire to contribute to society through the talents that they have been given and through the talents they wanna develop.  You know, when you’re in the education world it’s all about curiosity, it’s all about learning from others, listening to other stories, and understanding how that is your story also and what do you take from that.  So that’s when we started Students of the World, the concept of let’s go out and be ‘students of the world’ just as we are students at Duke, or at UT, or at UNC, and, you know, listen to other stories and translating that into something that can cause social activism, social change.  It’s really the power of storytelling at its best.  That’s what social media is.  We’re all telling stories.  Y’all are telling stories here. 

Students, you know, are telling stories as they write essays.  Our students are going out and retelling the stories that they have been told, and, you know, social media has really – we all know it has just exploded over the course of the last, you know, seven to ten years, but what’s really exciting is we’re starting to see so much more often that people are using that for good, for, you know, the Do-gooder Awards that YouTube does.  You know, the Ford Foundation just announced a really, you know, 50 million-dollar grant for cause-related social documentaries.  There is really this understanding that the power of storytelling can be best used when it’s a force for good, and it’s telling the stories of those who are doing great work across the world.

I think that there is really so much momentum to use social media for, you know, in a more creative way for the education of others, to really inspire people to take action, and there is this concept that we have always believed in at Students of the World is the importance of telling stories of progress.  Problems paralyze people and they make them feel that, you know, they can’t contribute because it’s war, it’s poverty, it’s famine, it’s all of this.  But when you tell stories of progress when you show problems through the lens of the good that is happening in the world it’s not only inspiring to others but it’s hopefully inspiring to a point of taking action.  And so being in that space you find that you have, you know, people that are able to educate through media, through art, to create change, and that’s – it’s just a really exciting place to be in.

Courtney Spence on Social Documentary Film Production Tips

In Chapter 9 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers how she applies her media production experience to teach students storytelling. Spence notes the importance of proper planning before the shoot and attention to detail during the shoot to ensure all shots are captured. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How has your own media production experience impacted how you teach storytelling?

Courtney Spence:  First of all, you can’t tell the stories you don’t have, I think, especially when you work in our model where, you know, you have four weeks, which is a long time, but we’re not going back to Tanzania, we’re not going back to Costano in post, and if I don’t have, you know, the foundation – the foundational pieces of the puzzle to the story, it’s gonna be really hard to go back and recreate that.  So the importance of true planning but also evaluating through the production process and not just ‘oh isn’t this is great, we had a great interview’, but actually going back and listening through it.  And did they actually say what the organization does?  They didn’t. And, you know, we need the executive director saying what the organization does, let’s go back and do a second interview because we have learned the hard way when we weren’t as thorough in sort of the evaluating through production coming back to Austin and not having what we needed to tell the story is quite frustrating.  So, you know, that’s a technical thing, but I think it goes back to being very disciplined in both pre-production planning and also disciplined in the field, and, you know, you’ll sleep later but for now you need to review tape and do that before you go to bed.

Courtney Spence on How to Tell a More Impactful Emotional Story

In Chapter 10 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers why being succinct is fundamental to telling more impactful emotional stories. When trying to tell stories of progress using viral media, compact stories work best engaging and inspiring audiences to take action on an issue. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  Why is being succinct fundamental to communicating an emotional and impactful story?

Courtney Spence:  People have limited time, people don’t have time to sit and watch a 30-minute documentary or a 20-minute documentary, people – the way that we think and the way that we interact to these days is 140 characters on Twitter.  It’s watch this two-minute video that’s just amazing and it makes you cry and forward it onto others.  That’s how the viral world works.  And when you’re trying to impact and tell stories of progress through storytelling, through media, it needs to be emotionally compelling enough to elicit action and, therefore, is impactful. 

To get that, you have to be succinct because if you’re trying to tell every aspect of the story, the ultimate purpose gets lost, the ultimate message gets lost.  It’s so much more powerful to hear, you know, one really incredible story that might be a testimony for the larger vision of the organization than for me to sit down and explain to you every single thing that an organization does because that’s just telling you all of this information that you could go find in an annual report, find on a website.  What I want to show you is the emotional impact, the lives that are changed through, you know, the power of this organization and because you might not have the opportunity to travel to Kenya or travel to Haiti. 

And to tell those stories, it’s really best if you can be as succinct as possible and not try and get caught up in the superfluous details and all these other things that you want to say.  And sometimes there are great aspects of a story but you really have to distill it down into what is the true change that is happening here, and where does, you know, the rubber meet the road, and where is the life that has been changed, and where is that human story that will really inspire other people to take action for this cause whether it’s donating, or voting, or signing a petition.

Courtney Spence on How Clinton Global Initiative Empowers Young Filmmakers

In Chapter 11 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers how the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) matches her non-profit student filmmakers to story opportunities in the field. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How does the Clinton Global Initiative act as a matchmaker connecting your students to stories?

Courtney Spence:  So, the Clinton Global Initiative is so many things, but one of the aspects of the organization is the fact that they have just a wealth of relationships, friendships, organizations, and stories to tell that touch upon everything from climate change to health, to women’s empowerment, to financial inclusion.  I mean the issues that are out there, you name it, it’s discussed, and not just discussed as a problem, it’s discussed as solutions, and you bring in organizations, and thought leaders, and innovators, and social entrepreneurs, and heads of state, and executive directors, and CEOs, and I mean you get this group together and it is a powerful force for change. 

So what happens there is you have all of these individuals and these organizations that, you know, within them have just layers, and layers, and layers of stories that are, you know, that need to be told.  And so, you know, we have been so fortunate in, you know, having CGI as a partner that we can say ‘okay, we want – here is what we offer, here is the service that we offer, here, you know, we have four projects this year, you know, let’s talk about various organizations that you think would be a good fit for this.’  And that’s always a really fun process to go through that with them because there are so many organizations and so much of it is also about timing and approaching people in the right way, but, you know, for us, what has been really exciting is to see organizations that weren’t necessarily on our radar  just sort of pop up and be, you know, end up becoming a lifelong partner, and it’s really – it’s an incredible network, and the stories, you know, that come from that are just absolutely inspiring.

Courtney Spence on How to Manage Non-Profit Client Expectations

In Chapter 12 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "How do you balance retaining artistic control over a final story product with client expectations around what they want to see in the post production process?" Spence shares how she balances maintaining artistic - or final cut - control with meeting client storytelling project expectations. She tempers potential hurdles by setting expectations up front, including tone, shots, interviewees, etc. Once her team hits the ground, often the stories or project elements change. This is where continuing communication, coupled with confidence based on experience, help manage and evolve client expectations. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How do you balance retaining artistic control over a final story product with client expectations around what they want to see in the post production process?

Courtney Spence:  So part of what we really try to do with our partners is do a lot of work upfront.  So it’s a media assessment, it’s a production proposal that is a back and forth, you know, basically, tool or conversation through a proposal that we have with our organizations to outline, here are our final products that we will deliver, here is the tone that we’re taking, here is the shots that we’ll be getting, here are the interviews, I mean we get very detailed in that.  Of course, then you get on the ground and everything changes, and you meet people that you didn’t expect, and all these great stories pop up in ways that you weren’t expecting to see them.  And sometimes the stories that you thought you were going to find that would be great just don’t translate very well through, you know, through film, through photography.  So when we come back, you know, a lot of it is just sort of internally looking at the footage and really seeing where are the strongest stories for this organization, where are the strongest proof points that this organization is making a difference at the human, individual, family, community level, and let’s go after those. 

So we have definitely found times where we present a rough cut to a partner and they’re like ‘but you didn’t talk about the fact that we also do microfinance levels to women over the ages of 60 in this community’ and I’m like ‘we love it, we think it’s great, it’s a great program, but either we didn’t find -- we didn’t have an opportunity to tell those stories or we feel that this one story will elicit an emotional response in the viewer enough to where they will go to your website and read about the program that you have for microfinance for women over the age of 60.  You want them to go read more about your project because you can’t tell everything in a two-minute piece.  And so a lot of what we have been able to do in the last couple of years is really, you know – there has been certainly a desire from organizations, we want a 15-minute piece, we want a 20-minute piece, and there are sometimes when those, you know, documentary films really work well, but more often than not, we specialize in and really, really encourage organizations to tell – let’s tell your story in three minutes or less.  Let’s tell it in 90 seconds or less. We have such a limited amount of time, we’re gonna have to sacrifice certain elements.  So there’s usually a back and forth that happens. We have to internally say ‘okay, we’re gonna fight for this, this, and this; we’ll give them this, this, and this.’  It’s not like a one versus the other, but it’s just, you know, organizations bring us on because this is what we do.

Courtney Spence on How to Make Student Filmmakers Non-Profit Advocates

In Chapter 13 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence shares how to leverage the passion of college student program participants to help non-profits non-governmental organizations (NGOs) thrive. Spence notes how student energy and enthusiasm complements a sense of mission and purpose working with the NGOs, ultimately becoming a champion or advocate of the cause. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How has the college student perspective advanced the cause of your NGO program partners?

Courtney Spence:  I think one of the really wonderful things about working with college students is this ‘can do’ spirit and this sense of optimism and a real desire to contribute. You know, college is a time where you are being inspired consistently through courses, through new friendships, through professors, through internships.  At its best college is, you know, it’s four years of incredible inspiration and stimulation in ways that – and challenging you to think in ways that you haven’t thought before. 

So when you take people that are in this moment in time, in their growth as a person that we’re they’re, you know, they’re able to apply things that they learned in theater class to what they’re, you know, learning in their public policy class, in ways that they wouldn’t have seen overlap, they’re seeing it, and when you apply that kind of person and throw them into a program where their whole purpose is to go listen, partake in stories, and then kind of regurgitate those in ways that can make a difference.  It’s a perfect match because what happens is these students come in, they are willing to rough it.  Will sleep in barns.  Will sleep on floors.  I wanna work with the family.  I wanna plant beans.  Just throw me, I will do anything.  I wanna learn.  I wanna be a part of this.  And there is just this sheer enthusiasm and energy, and then yet, there’s a real sense of like mission and purpose, and here is what we’re here to do. 

But what happens is, you know, the relationships that I have seen that our students have forged with the organizations and the individuals on the ground are really, really profound because, you know, they’re not worried about a gazillion other things that they have to do.  More often than not, they know more about the organizations than a lot of the volunteers and staff that they’ll meet on the ground because, for three months, they have been so excited in preparing and reading everything that they can get their hands on. 

So what we’re able to do for our organization is to say we’re not just sending you a team to come in for a week and do, you know, a five-minute video for you, we’re sending you seven, very optimistic, very energetic, very talented creative young people that wanna come in and more or less dedicate a year of their life to your organization, to understanding it, to telling your stories, and then being a champion and advocate for your cause, and that’s not found many other places, and, you know, we’re lucky that we’re able to do that because, you know, this is how Students of the World started.  It has been a very organic growth as an organization, but that, I think, is something that we’re able to give to our organizations that I really only in the past year have started to really appreciate.